Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T06:42:07.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Legacy: Self-Fashioning and Its Limits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

Heidi Rika Maria Pauwels
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

Chapter 5 traces the legacy of Bani Thani’s contribution to Kishangarhi artistic and literary production. First, it explores whether her poetry inspired Kishangarhi paintings, presenting correlations between the two. Next is presented her “spiritual testament” on the basis of newly discovered manuscript material. Its autobiographical posing in Sita style hints at her agreement with the prince’s inclusion of Rama-devotional attitudes after he lost his throne. This is picked up by the inscription on her memorial. The location of her cenotaph close to his in Vrindaban perpetuates the story of their love beyond death. The literary exchange of the pair lived on in manuscript as well as in liturgical singing, as evidenced to this day by combined performance of their songs, though over time, the memory that she was the composer has become blurred. Chronicles document the court’s choice to remember the devout stepmother queen, and the exiled prince, rather than the concubine. Some of her songs made it in a court-sanctioned lithograph edition of the prince’s devotional output, but only as a coda. By the end of the nineteenth century Kishangarh’s inspirational muse herself had practically fallen silent. The amnesia of her authorship endured, even as her features were immortalized.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Voice of the Indian Mona Lisa
Gender and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Rajasthan
, pp. 190 - 233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×